To Be a More Artful & Successful Lover
"Good Questions to ask as You Work to Become a More Artful and Successful Lover:
* What qualities do you look for in a lover that you would benefit from developing more fully in yourself?
* What do you think are your biggest delusions about the way love works?
* Is there anything you can do to make yourself more lovable?
* Is there anything you can do to be more loving?
* Are you willing to deal with the fact that any intimate relationship worth pursuing will inevitably evoke the most shadowy aspects of both partners - and prod both partners to heal their oldest wounds?"
- Rob Brezsny @robbrezsny
🎥 “Playboy Love Scenes,” 1973
What If Your Body Can Speak?
Traditional psychotherapy operates by "top-down processing” - observing, monitoring, integrating and planning through thinking and speaking.
At Flow, you may experiment with “bottom-up processing."
We'll help you mindfully track a sequence of physical sensations and impulses as they progress through your body, while temporarily disregarding the emotions and thoughts that arise.
Awareness, as opposed to avoidance, of your internal states allows feelings to be known, and to be used as guides for action. By being aware of your sensations, we will be able to introduce new options to solve problems.
Mind and Body Connect
THE ISSUES ARE IN THE TISSUES. "Your mind & body are dynamically interconnected. Your cells feel your thoughts and process them chemically, while your mind stays aware of how your body is doing.
When you activate any belief - positive or negative - your cells get the message immediately. The healing system that supports your body has immense intelligence of its own. What this means is that healing is already holistic, reaching everywhere, knowing as much about you as you do.
Once you really take this in, you will sense the enormous, mostly hidden, power of the mind-body connection. Our neglect and damaging habits, our bad choices & toxic emotions are anti-healing. We act as if the body is a complicated object we have little control over and often no sympathy with. To begin, what is needed is a shift in beliefs that begins with a basic but profound truth: Once you intend to heal, healing has begun."
-Deepak Chopra
Photo of Sex Educator & Cancer Warrior, Ericka Hart
Flow House
I’m happy to introduce you to Flow House Therapy in Los Angeles, California. At Flow, we are a community of therapists and healers working collaboratively in a beautiful house near Venice Beach.
In my private practice, I had many clients coming in with “anxiety,” but what does that word really mean? It can mean so many things! It can manifest physically as pain, exhaustion or stress. It can be emotional – moodiness, emptiness, fearfulness, lack of joy. Or it can be more subtle, sneaking in with unrealistic self-expectations, and when you feel insecure, not good enough, or like you need to control people & events.
Even though many of us are struggling with the same kinds of issues, I realized that each individual heals in different ways and responds to very different approaches.
I saw a need for something more than traditional talk therapy: other tools, other practices - both ancient and modern. I talk on my blog about the different ways I have learned healing can take place, such as modern neuroscience, secular spiritual philosophies, and body-oriented approaches.
By breaking down the barriers between these practices and drawing from each of them, Flow House came to life. Along with my longtime passion for design, art and interiors, I had a newly-defined perspective that I wanted to share with the community!
I have taken a pause from my blog, but have been full of creative expression on our Flow social networks. Recent topics have included healing in relationship vs on your own, attachment styles, meditation techniques to awaken the body, sexual power in relationships, letting go of obsessive thoughts, our brain’s negativity bias, and ways in which we keep ourselves small in order to fit in socially.
🌱 If you want to stay connected and help our business grow, you may enjoy following us on Instagram. All my future writing will be on the Flow House Blog. If you’re in the Los Angeles area and interested in coming in for a session, check out our website. We would love to meet you!
We have many more exciting offerings coming to life and cannot wait to share them with you! Love, Jori
Your Body Temple
"The Seed of the Areois" Paul Gaugin
This post is a continuation of my previous article on the energy systems in our bodies, known as chakras.
You may recognize the areas in which you're stuck or imbalanced as you read. Or you can pay attention to the physical pain and symptoms in your body to help steer you.
If chakras aren't your thing, you can think of each of these seven centers as necessary stages of growth and self-reflection that you go through on your path of inner illumination.
My Chakra Resource Center will also help guide you.
Thank you to Jill Willard for the amazing retreat I just attended and for many of these ideas. Also to Marie Manuchehri and Caroline Myss.
1ST CHAKRA 🍎 RED 🍎 BASE OF YOUR SPINE THROUGH LEGS AND FEET
What it covers:
- Your first years of life. Your basic needs. Safety. Security. Being seen, loved.
- Emotions pertaining to your childhood or family of origin.
- How did you feel about the homes and neighborhoods you lived in, or the schools you attended?
- The patterning you were taught by tribal / societal / familial conditioning.
How to strengthen it now:
- Grounding tools to stay connected to your self, soul, nature:
So much energy absorbs through the bottom of your feet. Touch your bare feet to the ground - dirt, earth, grass.
Walk in silence. Hear your footsteps, feel them.
Put your feet in a tub of organic sea salt water.
Hold stones in your hands. Hold copper. Hold wood.
Hug a tree. Press your chest against the tree, wrap your arms around it.
Hug someone who's grounded.
Drum circles. Deep rhythmic music.
- Let go of old patterning. What rules are you plugged into? Rules such as "Save your money. Be cautious, be safe. By this age, I should be (fill in the blank). Things should happen how I expect them to. If I do xyz, I will be happy." What rules are you believing, operating under, that you're not even aware of?
MEDITATION: I AM SECURE. I AM SAFE. I AM GROUNDED. I AM ROOTED.
2ND CHAKRA 🔥 ORANGE 🔥 PELVIC FLOOR - PUBIC BONE AREA - LOWER ABDOMEN
What it covers (it's a big one):
- Pleasure in relationships. Creativity. Joy. Sexuality. Passion. Your need to control. Comparison. Judgment. Addiction.
- Learning the value of relationship/partnership (and of the relationship with yourself too - both are important). That it's not just me, me, me - we grow, share, create pleasure with others ~ friends, family, partners, neighbors, community.
- Intimacy and trust.
- Your need to control others, to control events, to control the way things happen. Can you think of one person you are vitally interested and invested in controlling?
- Your attitudes about sexual attractiveness, about money, about the relationship between sexual attractiveness and money.
- Your capacity to nurture and be nurtured.
- Your creativity, the part of you that longs to give birth to ideas.
How to strengthen it now:
- Center yourself. Close your eyes and inhale and exhale slow, deep breaths for several minutes until you notice that your mental chatter has quieted.
- Rate your joy concerning your home, job, money, friends, family, partner, and creativity using 1 - 5 scale. In the areas that you're low, focus on a time in your life when you were happy. Use that memory as a tool. In the future, when making a choice, choose only those things that remind you of the happy time in your life. Do your best to walk away when the feeling is not there.
- Get to know your desires. Ask yourself: what food, music, or activity is my favorite? You're trying to identify and develop your own happiness, independent of others.
- Take responsibility for your thoughts and emotions.
- Give more, expect less.
- Less black & white thinking.
- Pay attention to how many times you wonder, "What will they say if I do this?" How much of your life does this thinking control?
- Release guilt. Lie on your back and place your hand on your belly. Close your eyes and repeat either out loud or in your mind, "I have always done the very best I could, in every situation of my life, with what I knew at the time."
MEDITATION: I AM HEALTHY. I AM CREATIVE. I AM ABUNDANT. I AM CALM.
3RD CHAKRA ☀️ YELLOW ☀️ STOMACH - GUT
What it covers:
- Self-esteem. Self-worth. Fear. Power. Confidence.
- Boundaries.
How to strengthen it now:
- Clearing, activating breath techniques, such as Lion's Breath.
- Slow, long extended breathing with one hand on belly, one hand on heart.
- What are my thoughts of worth? What have I been taught, mirrored?
- Whose approval have I sought? What criticism has stuck with me? What have I decided makes me attractive?
- What is my personal honor code, my center of integrity? What will I do or give up in order to keep another person in my life? Even if I know that person doesn't belong there.
- Where am I invested in fear? Of being rejected, alone, criticized, abandoned, of disappointing others?
- My self-esteem has to be based on my capacity to follow my own self, not based on my capacity to please other people.
MEDITATION: I AM POWER. I AM CONFIDENT. I AM STRONG. I AM WORTHY.
4TH CHAKRA 🌿 GREEN 🌿 HEART
What it covers:
- Love. Forgiveness. Kindness. Compassion. Giving and Receiving.
- Appreciation. Gratitude. Humility. Unconditional love. Vulnerability.
- Your relationship with how things are.
- Your relationship to feelings of envy, desire, jealousy, contentment, self-love, love of others.
- Your capacity to love without an agenda.
How to strengthen it now:
- Clear out expectations of others. Take people for who they are.
- "I am" instead of "I want."
- LET GO. Of expectation of your life or another's life.
- What am I grateful for?
- Expand the heart. Lovingkindness meditation.
- Maturity in intellectual intelligence, emotional intelligence, spiritual intelligence.
- Less words, less numbers, less counting.
- Flow, rhythm, stretch, move.
- Being in water is clearing.
- Stretch and open your shoulders, arms, hands.
- Tap on your collarbone and chest with your fingers.
- Walking meditation.
- Connection to all living things. Understanding we are all one.
- Learn to not judge others. Find something you appreciate about them and genuinely feel it.
- Forgive self. Forgive others. Love for self. Love for others.
MEDITATION: I AM LOVE. I AM JOY. I AM OPEN. I AM PEACEFUL.
5TH CHAKRA 🌊 BLUE 🌊 THROAT
What it covers:
- Discovering your voice. Speaking your truth. Acting bravely.
- Your capacity to control yourself. To maintain yourself while being in a group of people and not compromise yourself in order to stay within that group of people.
- Staying strong enough to know what you need to do no matter what the outside world tells you.
How to strengthen it now:
- Write down everything you do that you know you shouldn't do and everything that you don't do that you know you should. See where the wires are crossed.
- Pay attention to how you excuse yourself to break your own rules (including the belief patterns you really shouldn't believe but do).
- Express yourself honestly.
- Jaw release.
- Listen. Listen to hear the voice within. Listening wakes you up. But the voice is quiet.
- Sing. Make sounds. OM. Chant. Music. Drumming. Vibration. Rhythm.
- The eyes are the truth. Look people in the eye.
MEDITATION: I AM FREE. I AM BALANCED. I AM TRUTHFUL. I AM LIBERATED.
6TH CHAKRA 🔮 INDIGO - PURPLE 🔮 THIRD EYE
What it covers:
- Wisdom. Knowing. Intuition. Becoming a multisensory being.
- Higher sight. Higher creativity.
- Your capacity to use wisdom, to not judge.
How to strengthen it:
- While keeping your head still, make large circles with your eyes in one direction and then the other for 15 seconds each. Look up at the ceiling and down to the floor. Look as far left as you can and as far right.
- Pay attention to chills, visions, signs, synchronicities, a "knowing." (Write these down in journal).
- Peace and calm are important in order to hear, notice.
- Yoga, meditation.
- Immerse in water.
- Trying to make a decision? Hold a symbol of the decision at your gut. Does your belly feel warm? cool? nothing?
- Practice becoming aware of your physical body in the moment multiple times a day. For example, feel your socks on your feet. What is my skin feeling? Are the socks tight, loose, heavy? Is the fabric cotton, synthetic?
MEDITATION: I AM GUIDED. I AM CENTERED. I AM CLEAR. I AM INTUITIVE.
7TH CHAKRA 💎 WHITE 💎 CROWN OF HEAD
What it covers:
- Higher guidance. Spirituality. Consciousness. Unity.
- Your need for spiritual contact.
How to strengthen it:
- Meditation.
- Rituals.
- Call in energies - who do you want to talk to?
- Gratitude.
- Your job while you are on Earth is to discover your beautiful, unusual self and live your life out loud - not only to bring lasting joy into your life but to share the energy of feeling whole with the rest of the universe.
- The thing that keeps us from moving forward in our lives is fear. From there, we create defense mechanisms, which are behaviors that distance us from being fully aware of unpleasant thoughts, feelings, and actions. What are yours?
MEDITATION: I AM PRESENT. I AM WISE. I AM CONNECTED. I AM BEING.
Also see: Chakra Resource Center
